Drowning out the grey

Category: drawing

This week I have been playing with my mother’s day gifts. I had flowers and chocolates. Sad to say the chocolates didn’t last long but the flowers are still going strong.

A photo of the Mothers day flowers I drew

I took a few photos and then settled down to draw some of the flowers.

There are roses, gerberas chrysanthemums, and that’s where my knowledge of flowers ends I’m afraid. I don’t know the name of the flowers I drew; they are very pretty with little sprays with three or four flower heads on. You can see them above dotted around the bouquet.

Another sketch of some of the flowers in my mother’s day bouquet

I have to admit I do like flowers, I get to enjoy them as they sit in their vase plus I can draw them too, two gifts in one!

I know it doesn’t look like it but the colours in my sketch book are much closer to the real flowers, the scanner just doesn’t like pinks and purples.

The other flowers are a little more difficult to draw, gerberas aren’t too bad but chrysanthemums and roses still elude me, (so many petals) I just put my determined face on and keep plugging away at it. There is still quite a bit of life left in them.

1st of February is the day #pinchpunchpost happens on twitter, it’s a monthly challenge. They tell us at the beginning of the month what the theme will be and you get a month to draw/paint/art something on that theme. This month was squirrels.

Red squirrel sketch 2

I could have spent the whole month just drawing squirrels but normally I do mine in the last week (if I remember).

Grey squirrel sketch

Grey squirrel look-out sketch

The grey squirrels were drawn from photos I had taken in the local park, red squirrels are pretty scarce, they don’t live in our area (the grey squirrels, not indigenous to these shores have pushed them to the outskirts) so they were drawn from internet pictures.

Squirrel peeping sketch

They were all pencilled out lightly, coloured with watercolour then lined with a pentel brush pen.

I couldn’t decide between red or grey so drew both and picked out the ones I liked best.
Next months challenge is zebra, which should be interesting!

This year we wanted to draw more animals so we have bought zoo passes again. It’s still cold outside so in weather like this we like to go into the houses and see any of the tropical birds and animals. They keep it toasty warm in there.

In one such house we came across some tiny songbirds, so books and pencils out, we drew birds. Birds don’t like people, particularly the ones that stand and stare at them for ages; they get nervous and fly around.

If you look at the picture above and think Oooh…., well, that’s not the level of drawing I can do from living beings.

The kinds of things I draw at the zoo are tatty little things like the picture below. If you look carefully all of the information is there, I jot down little notes to remind me of the colours or any other distinguishing marks, their names and if possible I draw them from different angles.

Bird research sketches drawn at the zoo.

Once home I decided to do a little home work and look up the birds I had drawn to try and do a better job of capturing a likeness. I’m hoping this will help me, 1) learn to draw and 2) fix in my brain how they really look so next time I go out drawing birds (or anything else for that matter.) I will have a better understanding of how they are put together.

Zebra finch sketch

I haven’t looked up the superior fruit dove (what a name) yet, I didn’t have time to write down any notes on colours etc so I’ll go back next time and have another look. I could just find photo’s on the internet but I’ll probably learn more and get a better idea of the real colours by checking for myself. We have passes so we can go back every day if we want, we probably won’t, but we could hehehe.

If anybody has any useful tips for drawing live animals I would be very interested.

Hi there, how are you?
I have been thinking about jellyfish, I’m not sure why I find them so fascinating at the moment but they’re in my head so I’ve drawn them in my sketchbook.

Above are some jellyfish I drew with a preppy fountain pen, it still has Quink ink inside so I’ve brushed the lines out with a water brush (not that is shows up). It’s a bit scrappy but I was just trying to get the idea of how they’re put together.

Pink and blue jellyfish sketch.

Blue jellyfish sketch.

Long jellyfish sketch the blue one was outlined with a brush pen.

It’s hard when you look at them to see where one part ends and the next part begins.

I’ve tried to let lots of paper show through to make them appear transparent. They’re all drawn with pencil and coloured with watercolour. The blue one was outlined with a pentel brush pen because i didn’t like the way it turned out.

I think I need to practise drawing lots frilly things so I can do a better job of the arms (Is that what they’re called?)

Hi there and Happy New Year!
I’m writing this as the last post of the year but it will probably go out as the first post of next year.

Chinese panda from my sketch book 2

I’ve been sketching pandas; this month pinch punch post’s theme is pandas. (It’s a small twitter challenge on the first day of each month.) I don’t always do pinch punch post, sometimes I forget but since I remembered and I like pandas so I thought I’d give it a go.

Chinese panda from my sketch book 1

I started off doing Chinese pandas, the ordinary black and white ones. I did’t think black watercolour was dark enough for these little guys so I used my pentel brush pen. I actually ran the pen out drawing these and had to fill it up with ink again!

Originally the page was just black and white (a bit boring) so I painted some bamboo in the background of two of the pandas with watercolour, nothing too fancy just a bit of bamboo but it does look better than a blank page. Backgrounds are something I’m not really very good at doing so I need to practice them more.

Red panda from my sketch book 1

After drawing the Chinese pandas I saw a red panda on TV and thought Oooooh, as you do, so I drew a few red pandas as well.
I think I will have to be careful with the cerulean blue in future because it really doesn’t like to scan.

Red panda from my sketch book 2

Well it’s time to say goodbye to 2017 and welcome to 2018 Best wishes to everyone in the coming year I hope it’s filled with of peace, love and kindness.

I would like to say thank you everybody for the time you’ve spent here, reading, liking, following and making thoughtful uplifting comments. Thanks for the support and encouragement and for taking the time out of your busy lives to stop by. Till next time, have fun x